Henry Kissinger called Japanese "treacherous sons of bitches" for wanting normal relations with China, when he was a trusted aide to president Richard Nixon, according to documents declassified on Friday.
The outburst by the national security adviser came just before Nixon met then Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka at a summit in Hawaii in August 1972, according to transcripts of talks between the powerful negotiator and local and foreign officials released by the National Security Archive.
When Kissinger learned that Tanaka was to travel to China to establish diplomatic ties, he lividly reacted, "Of all the treacherous sons of bitches, the Japs take the cake."
"It's not just their indecent haste in normalizing relations with China, but they even picked National Day as their preference to go there," Kissinger said at a meeting in his hotel room with then US envoy to South Vietnam Ellsworth Bunker.
Kissinger was angry apparently because Japan, a key US ally, defied the foreign policy of the US, which at that time had diplomatic ties only with Taiwan.
Tanaka established diplomatic relations with China on September 29, 1972, a year after the UN expelled Taiwan in favor of China.
It was only seven years later that the US restored formal links with Beijing and severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Nixon however made a landmark visit to China much earlier -- in February 1972 -- to end 20 years of frosty relations between the two countries.
Kissinger's outburst against the Japanese is an example, confirmed by other documents, of his often difficult, sometimes antagonistic, relationship with Japan, a society that he had great difficulty understanding, said the National Security Archive.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS